


The Androgyne and the Eyelid City

by TrashCorner



Category: Original Work
Genre: Canon Non-Binary Character, Consent, Dream Sex, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Killer Robots, Mild Language, Other, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Shooting Guns, Surreal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:40:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23180335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashCorner/pseuds/TrashCorner
Summary: In this time, much of Earth is either uninhabitable or simply uninhabited. The remnants of humanity live either a solitary existence in self-sustaining cities, where architecture blends together with sentient machinery, or in pockets of painstakingly resurrected nature known as the greenlands. Those wealthy enough to have roots in the greenlands see the cities as derelict and dangerous, and families with relatives still living there have become desperate to extract them. But the cities, with their technologically-dependent and physically isolated inhabitants, continue to thrive, the citizens' dull waking lives made all the sweeter by one crucial secret...
Relationships: Hecta/Kyra





	1. Chapter 1

Every time I go to sleep, safe in the musty warmth of my apartment, I pass through the veil of shadows and emerge behind eyes which have no lids.

Today is the date of my fifth appointment with the rehabilitation specialist. She comes direct to my building, enters the lobby and keys in my room code at the desk. I watch all this on my TV, the fuzzy security footage picture-in-picture as I play _Parodius Collection DX_ , or more specifically _Paro Wars_ , the franchise's turn-based strategy game outlier. If I can beat every scenario with every general, I will unlock _Paro Boards_ , a playable 3D remake of the obscure officially-licensed _Paro Wars_ board game from 1998. By that point I suspect I will be sick of _Paro Wars_ , but the achievement is what matters.

The specialist is advancing on the delicate territory of my floor of the building now—I watch her tapping her foot in the elevator, and can almost hear her flats clicking against the cold metal beneath her. I can't imagine how uncomfortable it must be for her to be walking around in shoes all the time. She brought me a pair at the start of our third session, which have been sitting on top of my closet ever since. She tells me it's odd that I don't want to put them on, considering I do wear socks most of the time. When I told her the shoes were uncomfortable, she told me that's impossible, they're special running shoes that are meant to support and cushion the feet, and that I only have them because her son had lost the use of his legs and decided he didn't want them anymore. It was as if knowing those facts was supposed to make me want to wear them, as if she couldn't just give them to somebody who actually wanted them, instead of forcing me to have them and guilting me when I wouldn't do it.  
  


The specialist knocks on my door, and I let her in. She has a clipboard and pen in hand, and an analogue watch on her right wrist, as always, that shows the date as well, in the centre. She has tried to teach me about the new months, and none of them make any sense to me, neither the names of the days.

"So, Hecta, how're you feeling?"

"Just letting off steam," I reply, gesturing towards the TV. "I'm good, focused, really."

"Have you done the worksheets I gave you last session?" She gives me a slight frown, and looks to the pile of papers beside my bed. Printed pages from an encyclopedia sit alongside ink-smudged answer sheets.

"Is there any good reason why you won't let me type my answers?" I slink over to the bed and grab the bundle. I bring it over to her and, when she tugs it out of my hands, I wince and shrink away from her.

"You know as well as I do that we do that kind of work by hand and eye where I'm from," she says, "Not with computers."

"But you've got computers there." I look up at her and try to copy her frown. "And printers, that you used to print those articles, and the worksheets."

"Computers and literature have a far more perfunctory relationship in the greenlands." Her tone is harsher now, like she's scolding me, even though she's only stating fact. "Not to mention they play absolutely no role in human relationships, as you ought to know by now."

"Yeah, it sounds like a dream," I say, and roll my eyes, hoping the gesture is still culturally significant to her. I can tell it is, because she frowns harder.

"No, Hecta, it sounds like reality." Every syllable is a snap, like a dumb dog lunging at some flying insect. "And you know full well that's why I'm here. You know what I'm here for, don't you?"

I nod. "You're Sylvia Burgher, my rehab officer, come to take me away from the big bad building, my knight in shining nylon—"

"That's quite enough." She pushes past me, sits down in my beanbag chair and hits pause on my controller. I follow her, dragging my feet, and sit down in front of the TV, facing her. I place a hand on top of the PS7 Pro, feeling the gentle vibration of its cooling fans beneath its hard plastic shell.

"So what did all that stuff in the worksheet have to do with today?" I shift uneasily in my cross-legged position. It's so much more comfortable to stand, or to lie down, but she tells me those are inappropriate postures for this kind of situation.

"Well, at this point in the course of treatment, at least with clients similar to yourself, I like to begin by asking if they remember any details about their family."

There is a moment where I register what she has said, but draw a blank on its significance. I know what a family entails, or can entail, but have no idea of what the concept has to do with me.

"Hecta," she says, appearing to grow concerned at my vacant expression, "Let's start with your mother. What was her name?"

"My mother didn't have a name," I say, "I always just called her 'mom'. She never told me what her name was, either, and I never heard anybody else call her anything."

"But she must have had a name, right? Just, you never knew what it was." She leafs through the papers on her clipboard, until her widening eyes show me she's found what she's looking for.

She turns the clipboard around, and shows me a page full of information, like a character profile, with a photograph in the top left corner. It looks like my mom, but much older than I ever remembered her looking.

"This is your mother, Hecta." She takes her pen and points out the full name field. "Can you read out for me what it says here?"

I study the words, then pronounce each one slowly and carefully. "Ma-ry..." My tongue curls around each sound, like I'm trying to wear down a jawbreaker. "E-liz-a-beth... Fish-nee-grade-sky?"

"It's pronounced 'Vyshnegradskiy'. That's your surname, too, do you remember?"

"Obviously I don't." I scowl at her, the kind of scowl that sticks out and casts its own shadow over itself, the look of a bird of prey. "Otherwise I'd know how the fuck to pronounce it."

"Language, please, Hecta." She doesn't sound like she's scolding me, even though she is this time. Instead, she just sounds exhausted. As much as I don't like her, that doesn't feel good.

"Right, I'm sorry, Miss Burgher." I wanted to call her 'Ma'amburger' or something similar, but there's no point being petty and mean, especially because I'm starting to feel something from being shown that profile. A kind of anger, maybe, but that doesn't make sense. I haven't got any real reason to be angry at my mother, do I?  
She can see this change, how my vulture frown has given way to a more confused expression, or at least I guess that's what happened, because she asks me if seeing all this information about my mother makes me angry.

"I mean, you've kinda condensed her down to just one piece of paper," I say, "And also the fact you've got a photo of her that looks like it came from a long time after she went away, that doesn't feel good."

"What does it make you feel? You know, in the age of social media, people used to condense themselves down to blocks of information on purpose. In fact, they enjoyed it—"

"Yes, but where I live, Miss Hotdog, social media is different to the way you keep telling me it used to be. It's not something I can just go on at all times of the day—I do things, you know, I make art, I cook for myself, I play games, I exercise, I work, and I earn money. Then, at the end of the day, with a tummy full of hot dinner and nutrient drink and all that fuzzy bullshit, I go to sleep, and the dreams I have, unlike the stupid meat dreams you greenies have, are really real, the product of thousands of minds connecting to each other all through the night."

My tirade has stunned her, I can tell. Her mouth hangs open, her eyes wide and staring up at me through her shiny glasses. I have a weird thought in this moment, where I feel that she actually looks quite attractive right now. Like, if instead of having that big rant at her, I had just leant in and kissed her square on the lips, and then pulled back, she would be giving me that exact same look. I wondered if there would be a dreamer out there willing to help me experience that tonight. I hadn't roleplayed in a long time, purely out of having exhausted my mental fodder for such things.

"Hecta... you don't care about her, do you? Your mother. Do you realise what this document means? Can you tell me where your mother lives, right now?"

"My mother's dead," I say, "And gone, but this fake, lying, dead piece of paper says she lives in New Maine, in the greenlands, with my dad, whose name wasn't 'Ivan', it was 'dad' or it was nothing. He's dead too, by the way, but you know that."

  
"He isn't dead." She takes the clipboard away and turns my mother's documentation back to face her, flipping back through the papers on the clipboard to the blank first sheet. She uncaps her pen and takes down hasty notes. I roll my eyes again, which she ignores.

"Isn't he? So, the greenlands are this big fairytale world full of happiness and love, and all my dead relatives are there, and they don't have phones or computers or video games, and the clouds are white and the sky is blue, and people wear shoes all the time but are always sitting down, and there's only boys and girls and men and women, and they live in big square houses with puppies and kitties and eat red meat for dinner?"

"I don't know how you manage to be so correct about it all and yet so utterly resentful of it," she says, not looking up from the page on which she's still furiously writing.

"It's because people who lived like that created the oh-so-fucking-terrible conditions I live in." I press my palm harder against the top of the PS7, wanting to engulf myself in its fluttering fanbeat. I try to memorise the sensation as I feel it on my hand, so I can recreate it in a dream later as accurately as possible. My thoughts drift from the topic at hand, and already I'm sketching tonight's dream in my head, blurring the edges of experiences together and overlaying sight upon sight upon feeling—a fellow dreamer who looks for all purposes like Miss Burgher did when she was looking at me in surprise, but not actually looking like Miss Burgher does, just enough like her for the expression to make me feel the same way it did in that moment—my body engulfed in the sensation of the cooling fans felt through the console's solid sloping façade, and when I reach out and touch Not-Miss-Burgher's cheek, the sensation will spread to her, wrap her up in its pleasing oscillation, like a heartbeat sped up twenty times over, and I'll pull her body, the dreamer's body, onto mine, and we'll make love surrounded by the flutter of the fans, a single beautiful two-backed angel with a thousand wings beating like twenty-times-speed hearts, carrying us through the open sky over mythic New Maine for all the dead prudes to watch in disgust.

  
At the end of the session, Miss Burgher says she really hopes I'll find it in my heart to delete my account with the building soon, and that Mary and Ivan really miss me where they are. She reminds me that I can't actually go and visit the greenlands unless I do that, and I tell her I know, its immune system would go nuts otherwise.

Obviously I don't want to leave, I think to myself as I climb into my dream-bed that night. She's given me more worksheets to fill out, long-answer assignments where I have to recount childhood memories. I don't want to think about my parents, don't want to imagine mom's old, wrong face, don't want to know that I have a sister now. I didn't have a sister when I left, and dead people can't have kids. I close my eyes and am bathed in tepid water, and soon pass out of the waking world.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: this chapter has GETTIN IT ON and more coarse language & some gruesomeness, so i'll update the tags & archive warnings accordingly after i post this

Standing in the impossible quiet of my dream-room, with its marble columns and central figure of a sharp-faced Athenian man, his pupil-less stone eyes cast wistfully in my direction, I wait for Kyra to come. I pinged her earlier on Misericord, not long after Miss Burgher left, to see if she'd be my partner tonight.

I've always loved Kyra's dreams, the way their images and sounds and sensations are so vivid, so much more than anything I had tried to experience for myself in phys' space. Phys' interaction between those who lived in the building was viewed dimly by the immune system, since isolation avoided the risk of spreading plague. There were actually two plagues, one of which was just an extreme form of flu which died outside the body too quickly for study, and hence still had no vaccine, and the other was a type of 'fasciitis', which was fairly easy to treat if it was caught in time, but med unit response times in the building were slow enough that the worst of the tissue damage had usually already happened by the time help arrived.

These are the kinds of thoughts I have only in the safety of the dream-room, if only because they upset me too much to think about on my own. I stagger toward the marble Greek, who holds my head to his chest, the palms of his stone hands softer and warmer than one would expect. I so badly want to alter him, to add the whirring of the PS7 fans underneath his skin, but he's a stable construct and can't be altered. It also wouldn't be right, given the sexual connotation I had attached to the fan sensation, considering the memory he came from was a museum trip with my dad, and the warmth and softness of his hands was a fatherly, platonic comfort.

  
Kyra shows up in the north-west archway of my room, and I slip out of the statue's embrace to go greet her. Her dream-body is, as she assures me, the perfect simulacrum of her physical one, like the way mine always is. She's dressed in a 'chiton' to match my room theme, even though I'm just in everyday clothes. I tell her that's no fair, playfully of course, and she says the chiton is what she really wore in phys' before she went to sleep, made out of a big bedsheet.

"Don't miss those," I say, and smile to the side, showing a peek of crowded teeth.

"You miss me, though." She smiles back, lips pursed, and comes toward me, giving a little shimmy of her hips with every step.

I can't hold back a laugh, and she looks at me with a kind of suspicion.

"You just keep getting weirder," she says, breaks her stride and stands with hand on hip. "I wonder if the kind of dreams you keep doing are making your frontal lobe go fuzzy."

More barely-suppressed laughter. "You miss me, though," I echo. "Besides, you only dream about boring shit on your own. Can't imagine dreaming about going to the store and buying milk and eggs in the kind of clarity you have."

"And your orgy nightmares are a better 'use' of my 'clarity', are they, Heck?" She frowns at me, a disappointed Miss Burgher frown, and I bite down on my lip.

"You like my dreams," I mutter, feeling the dryness of my lip-skin escape its realistic bounds and skitter over my body like a family of bedbugs. "You get into them like somebody who likes them, anyway."

She sighs, and rolls her eyes. "It is a welcome relief from self-isolation, but then anything is. It definitely beats losing to you at Smash and Puyo Pop every other weekend."

"Not my fault they broke Corrin so good. Maybe if you got off your high horse about Bub & Bob you'd see how the other half live."

"They've got more tech in one little claw than that dragon-twink you won't put down—"

In a split second, I'm beside her, my mouth beside her ear. Her hair smells like moscato and artificial 'fresh linen' scent, smells I only know from dreams she's shown me, and whose impressions follow me through phys' like accusatory ghosts.

"Are we going to argue about vidya all night," I whisper, and can see her ear, like a seashell of soap, already blushing at the feeling of my hot breath, "Or are we going to make some sweet, sweet dreams?"

A shiver runs down through her dream-body, whose form begins to change, borders becoming fuzzy—the white cloth draped over her dissolves into a cloud.

"I'm going to transform you. Is that alright?"

She nods. "Yes, that's alright. Now, please..." I can feel her heart racing through the air of the dream-room. I trust her, and I know she trusts me.

The sensation of her subconscious opening to mine is difficult to describe, even I've done this so many times. Another Misericord friend of mine, Paul, once shared with me a recording of an ancient American philosopher, McKenna, who talked a lot about his experiences on a drug called Ayahuasca—when he recounted the way his experiences began with the sense of passing through a giant unfolding chrysanthemum, that description in particular stuck with me, so let's say the feeling is like that, only you don't actually feel as though you're moving or going anywhere.

Either way, once I'm there, I think the image of Miss Burgher's features, her stunned expression, the feeling of flying without falling, and the hum of the PS7 cooling fans, into her. Then, I retreat, and watch as she takes on the form. Her face is just a little longer and sharper now, her cheeks rounder, and a pair of glasses with square frames of deep red are perched on her nose.

"That's it," I say. I don't want to say "It's good", or "I like it", to impose a notion of value onto such a selfless thing. That is, I still see Kyra's eyes behind those glasses, and the body, though now she is slightly taller, is still hers, underneath the white blouse and black pencil-skirt lifted from my memory of Miss Burgher.

"Hold on, Heck." I know she can see how I'm looking at her, partly awed and partly needy. I feel a little ashamed that I'm so bad at hiding it—I want to know that it's just as much for her as it is for the image she's taken on, but at times I think she prefers it to be the other way.

"What is it?"

"I want to transform you, too."

I'm initially surprised, only because she usually doesn't ask to. I used to change myself a lot when we started, but the forms I would take on started to make her scared for me, and she made me promise I wouldn't do it anymore until I could feel okay in my phys' body.

"It might be a little bit experimental," she says, "But I've tried it before with, like, one other person, and it was completely safe."

"What is it?"

"Well, I don't wanna imply just one Hecta isn't enough for me, but I kinda want to try two."

"Two?"

"If you let me in," she says, "I can show you how to do it. It'll be weird, but you'll be okay, I promise."  
So I assent, even though I don't have a lot to go on to let me know if it's a good idea or not. I just trust Kyra, for better or worse, and that's that.  
The metaphor mentioned earlier, the one about the chrysanthemum, doesn't do so well to describe how it feels to be entered, rather than the other way around. Instead, just imagine how it feels to swallow a piece of gum tied to a string, but locate the sensation in your head, rather than your throat, and that's how I feel in this moment.  
  


Kyra's thoughts are inside me like lightning in a jar, pinging off my inner walls like pinballs, and like pinballs they are excited in turn by the deepest parts of me.  
The spots they strike off start to swell, each contact filling them with pressure until the entirety of me splits, at last, into two wholes that are both Hecta, though I briefly flirt with the idea of being Heckle and Jekyll, or Hex and Tec, or Vysh and Gradskiy. It's better to be Hecta, I think, especially because I can feel the connection so strongly between the two bodies, like piano wire joining every atom.  
Subtle differences between the selves are there though, and I'm not sure whether some were Kyra's idea or mine. One of the Hectas has long painted nails, the other's are short and bare; one has shaggy brown hair, the other red and undercut; both of me also feel a little shorter, likely to contrast Kyra's new height—it feels right to call her "Miss Kyra" now, actually. I decide to call my selves Red Hecta and Messy Hecta.

Kyra smiles at Messy Hecta with my baggy clothes and rosacea-cheeks, and at Red Hecta with my lip-glossed, over-confident smirk. She looks back at Messy Hecta and licks her lips.

"So," I say, out of Messy's mouth, "What are you gonna do with us, Miss Kyra?"

She smirks. "That's cute. You're going to do—"

With a snap of her fingers, both my bodies are engulfed in the busy hum of cooling fans. I shoot toward myself, and our hands magnetise together, fingers interlocking. I'm nose-to-nose, can smell Messy's musk and Red's sickly-sweet perfume. I bury Red's nose in Messy's neck and smother myself in my hot, strong scent. Through Messy's eyes, I see the poor statue covering his face.

"We should take this somewhere else," says Kyra, and the next few moments are a blur—my dream-room falls away from us, and soon we are surrounded by empty sky, until a blurry cage manifests on all sides. Kyra says something I can't quite make out, and the cage-shape condenses into a big sedan-chair sort of thing, its interior filled with silk cushions and shimmering satin sheets.

"Don't you think it's a bit much?", Messy asks her, even as Red is already hastily tugging off my jacket.

"Since when have you been such a horn-dog?" Kyra laughs, going over to Red and kneeling down beside me. "Not that I'm complaining. You wanna show your very own clone some love, don't you, redhead?"

"Just call me Red, please," says Red, while hiking my shirt up. I'm not ready to take it off, I think, I'm not comfortable with it just now, but I take it from Red's hands and grip the hem in my teeth, keeping my chest and belly exposed.

I can't help but purr with basic lust as I trace my tongue up along Messy's body, tasting my sweat—I can tell I'm nervous, but just as excited. Both of me want this, both want me.

Miss Kyra laughs again, a closed-mouth chuckle that fills my bellies with heat. Red surges forward and pushes Messy onto my back, plants my lips on mine, and I fiercely kiss myself, tongues sliding over each other like mating slugs.

Red's teeth graze my lip, and I wrap my legs around my waist. Miss Kyra tuts and taps my shin. "Uh-uh, you get the rest of those clothes off before you do any more tangling, you two."

A touch reluctant, I let myself go. Red sits up on my knees and Messy scoots back along the bed and starts to pull off my sweatpants. Red reaches back and unbuttons my skirt, slides the zipper down, pulls it off over smooth legs, which are soon entwined with my unshaven legs again as I meet once more in kiss, grinding our hips together and clawing at each other's backs, tongues wrestling, as if all this pushing and pressing could put me back together again.

The world around me goes dark. The sky is gone, the sedan-chair bed, and Kyra. I feel no fans, but feel only one body, one Hecta.

I feel cold fluid drain from around me, and I sit up in the fast-emptying dream-bed. My TV is off, all lights are out—even the faithful Navi night-light in the corner, the one I've had since I was so small, is off.

I scramble for my phone on the floor in the pitch dark. I call out for Mixy, and he recognises my voice-print. The phone's screen illuminates, and I pounce on it, snatch it up in both hands and unlock it. I turn off the wi-fi, of which there is none, and turn on data. I open Misericord and start to type out a message to Kyra, but stop when I see my nails, long and filed to neat round ends, and painted rich, deep red. I finish up and hit send.  
  


I try to think about the day's events, but nothing about it seems quite right. Miss Burgher's face is distant, fuzzy like a dream-object in mid-transformation. I can't remember what the worksheets said, or what I wrote on them. I can feel my heart racing, not like Kyra's in the dream, but like something is chasing me. Something coming closer and closer on long, double-bent legs, propelled by hydraulic tubing—

I can hear an antibody running down the hallway, blaring pre-recorded warnings about trespassers and forceful expulsion. I use the phone's light to find some decent clothes, get dressed, and look myself over in its front camera. My cheeks are all flushed, the skin around my nose dry, the bags under my eyes thick and blue. I almost look like I have the building-flu.

I slide my keycard out of my phone-case and press it to the lock. I hear a click, an affirmative little tune, and open the door. I step out into a darkened hallway, and shine my phone-flashlight around—I see the antibody disappear around a corner, and I breathe a sigh. I walk the other way, seeing which doors are open and which remain closed. There seems to be no clear pattern, but in spite of how many doors are open, I can't see anyone else leaving. If there was an outage, I think, how long ago must it have happened?

In the back of my mind, I'm still thinking about the dream, about the way it felt to be two instead of one. Though I hadn't been that way for very long, to only have one body again felt wrong. I try to fight off the mounting desire to experience it again, confronted by the fact that it was impossible in phys'.

I check Misericord. Kyra tells me she's alright, but that all the lights in her building are out. Somehow, she says, the keycard locks still have power, as does the immune system, which is running itself ragged. I tell her it's the same way where I am, and say I'm glad she's alright. She says to stop talking until we find safe places to settle down, and I say okay.

  
Kyra, and her absence, when moments ago she was right there with me, start to weigh on me. I close Misericord and press on, sweeping my flashlight around. No signs of life so far, and no other antibodies in sight, though I can hear their footsteps and the sound of voice recordings playing over the top of each other, phasing in and out of synch.

Soon I'm standing before the elevator. I'm. not sure whether to try it, but I hear the sound of antibodies coming up the hall toward me and jam my finger into the down button.

Decision made. I hear it roar up the shaft and stop with a sick-sounding thud. The doors slide open—inside the elevator is a body, slumped in the corner. I look over my shoulder and see an antibody, arms flailing and eyes beaming with white light, and I hurry inside.

I press the ground-floor button, then press it again, and again, as if the doors would take it as a cue to close faster. The antibody sticks its arm through just as they start to slide shut, and I drop to the floor the instant I see the light on its wrist blink on. Just as I hear the click of its gun loading, the doors come together hard, the arm shatters, and a spray of little metal darts embeds itself in the back wall of the elevator.

The body on the floor stirs, with a long, low groan, and I spin around, tripping over and landing right on my tailbone. What a fat lot of good Miss Burgher's son's shoes have done me, I think, looking down at them and scowling. I see the body past them, and pull myself up, backing into the doors. The elevator starts its descent.

The body rolls over, now laying prone on the floor, and reaches out a trembling hand toward me. In the phone-light I can see bone and muscle through blackened holes in its flesh.

"Looking for me..." Its voice is parched, sounds like fingernails on drywall. "Antibody... should have let it in, kill me, not well..."

"Just keep your distance," I say, "And if we're lucky neither of us will have to die, okay?"

"Building... lights only thing not working... talk hurts, everything—"

"Then give it a rest. We'll be at the ground floor soon, we might get some answers there, or at least get out of the building."

"Go find... well people... don't save disease vector, please, Hec-tah..."

I'm stunned. I don't recognise the body at all, how does it know me? The elevator hits bottom and the doors behind me slide open. I stumble back into the lobby, which still has some dim lights running.

"Remember... Derek... I showed you how to paint... nails."

My head's spinning, and I keep backing away, even though it's all coming back to me—Diva Derek, small-time VidWorld user, beauty tutorials twice a week, dream-share friend-dates for top donors. I scrounged so much money to afford mine, and it made me feel like I could do anything. Even though I was still living in what Miss Burgher called "squalor", ever since my Derek-date I had the knowledge and the motivation to do all those little things that made me feel better about myself—shaving, buying new clothes, styling my own hair, and the nails, which I still can't remember having done before I went to bed, but there they were, shining on my fingers like rubies.

"I'll come back for you, Derek." I feel tears coming, and something rising in my throat. "I'm going to get you help."

He tries to speak again, but a nasty gurgle is all that comes out. He hacks up a wad of purple phlegm, and his hand drops to the floor with a dull thud.  
  


I'm running now, past the reception desk, which is spewing the same voice recording as the antibodies, over and over. The revolving doors to the building are frozen in place, the glass in them smashed through. I need to get to a hospital, not just because I really do want to help Derek, but also because they have human staff, who might just still be there if whatever's happened to the buildings hasn't happened to them too.

I hear the elevator closing behind me as I climb through the empty doorframes. I know he'll be safe in there, the antibodies can't open them, and nobody else will risk going near him.

The streetlights are all still on, which makes what's happened in the buildings even more puzzling. I turn off my phone-light and check Misericord. I read the newest messages from Kyra, and my stomach turns.

  
Kyromantic [Today at 2:30 AM]  
> I just got to the front desk and it keeps spouting the same shit the antimonies are  
> **antibodies  
> Anyway yeah its so weird that only the lights are out right  
> Hold on i think i see someone out front

  
hectare [Today at 2:32 AM]  
> I've only seen one other person in rly bad shape  
> what do they look like

  
Kyromantic [Today at 2:33 AM]  
> Ok your gonna thin this is weird but  
> ***THINK  
> You know the dream we were having before  
> They look like red

  
hectare [Today at 2:35 AM]  
> you mean they look like me?  
> Kyra what are they doing

  
Kyromantic [Today at 2:36 AM]  
> They got their back turned i can't tell  
> Hold on their turning around  
> Hecta what the duck

  
hectare [Today at 2:37 AM]  
> Kyra

  
Kyromantic [Today at 2:37 AM]  
> What

  
hectare [Today at 2:38 AM]  
> its me  
> holy shit never mind it's me it's you

  
Kyromantic [Today at 2:38 AM]  
> WHAT THE FUCK  
> wave at me  
> NO WAY  
> I FUCKIN SCREAM

  
hectare [Today at 2:38 AM]  
> i know i can hear you

  
"Shit, Heck! Why are we still typing?", she calls out. "I'm coming to you, stay where you are!"

She bolts for the doors, hops through them, and runs toward me.

"Wait, stop! I might have picked something up from Derek!"

"The fuck is Derek?" She's gaining on me, and I turn to run, but she catches me, wraps me in her arms, holds on tight. "Oh god, Heck, how the hell? I don't care, just... god you smell good, what is that?"

"It's... eXplore by Hannah Geist," I mumble. I should be so happy to see her, especially with how happy she is to see me, but I can't get my head around it. Had we really been living in the same building the whole time? Why would she tell me she was all the way on the other side of the world?

"I just don't get," she says, "Why your profile said you lived in New York."

As if my gut couldn't twist itself up any tighter. "Because we're in New York, that's why. I don't know, why did you put down Perth?"

"Because I live in fucking Perth, Heck." She lets me go, backs off and folds her arms. "And so do you, apparently."

"Instead of getting mad at me," I say, "Why don't we consider that we probably don't live in either of those places, and try to find out what's really going on here?"

She takes a moment to consider it, and concedes. Her stern demeanour fades, and her arms drop by her sides. I go up to her and hug her, and she hugs me back. She really does smell like fresh sheets.

"None of this makes any sense," she says, and I can hear the sad warble in her voice. I pat her back, run my hand over it, feel her tears when she hides her face in the crook of my neck.

"I know it doesn't, but we need to get out of here before the antibodies realise we're outside..."

"Oh fuck." She sobs and clings onto me. "Fuck, I don't wanna die, Heck, not now, I can't—"

"Then let's _go_ already!" I let go of her and she lets go of me. I take her hand, give it a soft squeeze, and we set off down the street.


End file.
